NASA Expedition 33/34 Launch Scheduled for Tuesday

NASA astronaut Kevin Ford (left), Expedition 33 flight engineer and Expedition 34 commander; Soyuz Commander Oleg Novitskiy (center) and Flight Engineer Evgeny Tarelkin (right) clasp hands Sept. 21, 2012 in front of a Soyuz vehicle mock-up as they wrap up two days of final qualification exams at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia. The trio is scheduled to launch Oct. 23 in their Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for a five-month mission on the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA

The Soyuz TMA-06M will bring three new crew members to the space station and the crew will return on March 19, 2013. Expedition 33 will continue to expand the scope of research on the space station. They will take advantage of its microgravity environment. The new experiments include tests radiation levels on surrounding outposts. Nasa will test how microgravity affects the spinal cord and this information can be useful to future astronauts. The International Space Station Agricultural Camera will investigate dynamic processes on Earth, like melting glaciers, and seasonal changes and human impacts on the ecosystem. Expedition 33 crew members will perform more experiments that cover human research, biological and physical sciences, technology development, Earth observations and education.